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BRAVER THAN LIONS
Sam Stringer
Feb 1, 2025
So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, "It is finished!"
And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.
John 19:30
What ended the life of Jesus? Was it being too physically broken? Was it bleeding out? Was it
trauma, a heart attack? Was it a depressed spirit? No, it was the acknowledgement that His
work was complete, and the giving up of His spirit that ended His life. Was this suicide? No, it
was not. It was His purpose in saving people as well as the complete will of the Father fulfilled
prior to His burial and resurrection. We know that prophecies such as Psalm 34:20 foretold that
He would not have his bones broken, and this is how the others deaths were ensured. As they
would hang on the cross, the process often might take anywhere from hours to several days,
DAYS, before they would die. In order to speed up the process, the legs might be broken so the
person on the cross would not be able to support themselves and would die from suffocation,
their lungs compressed from the positioning of their outstretched bodies and gravity working
against them. The Romans were experts in torture and death.
Christ gave up His spirit and there were no further human engagements made to see to His
death; the spear in His side only served to confirm whether He was dead as the blood and water
separated. Jesus’ work was finished. I have come to believe that one of the most powerful
verses in the New Testament is, in fact, John 19:30. Why is that? The Greek for this word
(tetelestai) is in what’s called perfect tense, meaning that when Jesus said, “It is finished,” the
word carried the idea that something was done but that the effects would carry on indefinitely.
Perhaps you might think of something like Stonehenge, those giant rocks standing there for who
knows (at least God and the people who put them there) how long and for who knows how far
out into the future. The problem, of course, is that those rocks will not stay there forever, if we
know our Bibles. The chaos of the end of this present world will most certainly see the undoing
of some of the most iconic and stable monuments and mountains into nothing but memory.
Peter writes in 2 Peter 3:10-12,
“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away
with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works
that are in it will be burned up. Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner
of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming
of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the
elements will melt with fervent heat?”
The connection I would draw, again, is that there are few things we can rely on ultimately to
have been finished and to remain finished (if we go back to those monuments like Stonehenge),
but one thing we know that will remain finished is the work of Christ on the cross. Additionally, it
is safe to say that all of the promises of God are not only true in any given season, but eternally
reliable as well.
Practical implications for you today: Jesus’ forgiveness He offered you cannot be undone. Your
salvation cannot be lost once it has been found by trusting in Him by grace through faith. Your
sin is not greater than the grace of God, ever. The Devil, though he continually works hard as he
does, can never overcome what has been done by Christ in the finished work of the cross.
Doubts and fears may assail, but nothing can undo what has been done. It was finished. It stands finished. It will forever be finished. There is nothing more to do to offer salvation and
nothing more can be done to take away what has been done. Boy, I am starting to sound like
some wizard from Lord of the Rings here. Anyways, bring your heart and your hopes back to
this simple but complex and profound statement from Jesus today: It is finished.
Be blessed.
Sam Stringer
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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